Nooo waay! Damn no trial version. Now all we have to wait for is Vray and Brazil and the circle will be complete:applause:

elvis75k

11-08-2005, 06:29 PM

Woo.. finally!!

Edited:

woo Have u read the faq?
450$ + for 5 support call !?
and only windows XP (!)

ghostlake114

11-09-2005, 06:44 AM

great...so mentalray will not win bt default :wip: :wip: :wip:

Venkman

11-09-2005, 02:55 PM

Woo.. finally!!

Edited:

woo Have u read the faq?
450$ + for 5 support call !?
and only windows XP (!)

It says on the site it is available for Mac OSX.

elvis75k

11-09-2005, 03:24 PM

It says on the site it is available for Mac OSX.

Ok... i mean.. What about win2k ?

Venkman

11-09-2005, 03:38 PM

Ok... i mean.. What about win2k ?

Ooops, I misunderstood. Us mac users are kind of self centered.
:)

You do bring up a good point. I don't use windows as often, but from my experiences and the things I hear from co-workers, Win 2k is rock solid. 'twould be a shame if they did not support that.

kevinseven

11-09-2005, 04:18 PM

Did I read the FAQ right? Does it include unlimited nodes for batch rendering?
It sounds like you buy one license of Rman for Maya and you can render on every machine that has a Maya license. Or am I confused...

thematt

11-09-2005, 04:34 PM

Or am I confused...

yes you're confused..:)

that would be to nice of a deal, no you can only render one one Cpu, unless you have a node lock license, if that's the case you can use all Cpu on you machine obviously..

it's in FAQ.
anyway this really nice, can't wait to be able to try it out.

cheers

mustique

11-09-2005, 07:20 PM

yes you're confused..:)

that would be to nice of a deal, no you can only render one one Cpu, unless you have a node lock license, if that's the case you can use all Cpu on you machine obviously..

it's in FAQ.
anyway this really nice, can't wait to be able to try it out.

cheers

You can use all cpus on a comp, but every cpu renders one frame of an animation.
Testrenderings will only use 1 cpu AFAI understood.

CornFielD

11-09-2005, 07:31 PM

This is great news I cant wait to get my hands on this.

Has anyone seen any reviews from it or something else to read from it (other than the pixars site)?

There was also something on the pixars site that you could download trial version of it with valid credit card number, but now it has dissapeared, so it most propably is not the case anymore?

SheepFactory

11-09-2005, 09:30 PM

Nah now you have to buy it but you get 30 day moneyback guarantee. This is very tempting i must say , cant wait to see some user comments on how well its integrated and some renders before doing the purchase.

BillB

11-10-2005, 08:52 AM

that would be to nice of a deal, no you can only render one one Cpu, unless you have a node lock license, if that's the case you can use all Cpu on you machine obviously..

it's in FAQ. Yeah, that FAQ isn't all that clear, I was a bit in the dark on that point even after reading the FAQ.

"As long as there is a Maya license present on each platform, you can run as many copies of RenderMan for Maya as you like in batch mode."

So what they mean is "a Renderman licence present on each machine" presumably. They really need to rewrite that!

Later they do say :
"When used in this mode, Maya will consume a batch render license and RenderMan for Maya will consume one full license."

So that's a bit more clear - but then, what's a Maya "batch render license"?

I just noticed that in the review linked above, the Maya viewport has the view compass, so apparently there is a version working with 7, but is it the released version?

sacslacker

11-20-2005, 12:52 AM

I'm using it with Maya 7 and it works great!

ronaldomiranda

11-20-2005, 12:00 PM

Hey sacslacker, can you post any screen shots please?

a lot of ppl are very interested and curious for see that ;)!!!

meshman

11-26-2005, 08:10 PM

we just bough a licens to evaluate if we are going to put is as our premiere renderer. Keep you posted what i think of it

Render fast and retire young!

nerdfiles

12-02-2005, 11:16 AM

I've just been to escape studios' (http://www.escapestudios.co.uk) "A evening with Pixar" which was held to launch renderman for maya and explain the renderman and rfm pipeline (escape are the only european reseller of the renderman products)
It was a great event and the licensing was explained as such:
rfm is licensed per machine, the number of procs/cores does not matter.
Maya has a limit of 9999 batch licenses, and so one license of maya and 9999 licenses of rfm would work if rendered via a distributed batch render.

the fast motion blur and deep shadows are going to come in so handy!
It looks like a really great tool.
Jez

I can render on 12 processors b/c RFM is using the Maya Batch Render license (of which there are 9999) and is licensed per machine instead of per processor (so 2 instances on each duel processor machine).

If that's the case then I'm all in - I was thinking that I had to have a Maya license and 2 RFM licenses for each duel processor machine...

-Greg

meshman

12-04-2005, 09:58 AM

yes thats the case if you use node locked rfm, We just bought four rfm to render on two apple dual G5 and two windows machines. So we now have six processors to render renderman on, using rush as distributor

Als

12-06-2005, 03:47 PM

I've been there too.
It blow my mind!
It really works.
It's really simple to use, so I'm certain it's a good news for all renderman/maya users, since it's showing real path where the RAT will certainly go too, and that's much easier and better integration with maya.
It works just like any rendering.
For renderman special attributes, they can be added in atribute editor by just selecting "add renderman attributes", simple!
Also rendering displacement with dept of field and motion blur and all SS and all of this in one QUICK QUICK QUICK render, it's everything I always missed in maya.
Plus GI, AO, and raytracing...
It's all there.
And for hair and fur, renderman depth shadows do wonders!
Plus you can write your own renderman shaders and include them in your shading network.
Rendering licenses make sense, that you have on per each machine.
I think they were listening and there is the tool which was missing from the market.
I think the price is right as well.
I can see it being used in small studios, but also for simplier shots in big studios.
As far as I know the resolutions is unlimited, and renderman can deliver all you need.
RMfM rocks! :love::buttrock::applause::cool:

Als

I've just been to escape studios' (http://www.escapestudios.co.uk) "A evening with Pixar" which was held to launch renderman for maya and explain the renderman and rfm pipeline (escape are the only european reseller of the renderman products)
It was a great event and the licensing was explained as such:
rfm is licensed per machine, the number of procs/cores does not matter.
Maya has a limit of 9999 batch licenses, and so one license of maya and 9999 licenses of rfm would work if rendered via a distributed batch render.

the fast motion blur and deep shadows are going to come in so handy!
It looks like a really great tool.
Jez

Arcon

12-10-2005, 09:30 PM

i just read that review on highend... in the last page he says it needs to be multithreaded..is this correct??

that is an absolute joke if its a $1000 renderer that's not multi-threaded... jesus even decade-old renderers are multi-threaded. basically a dual-core or dual-cpu machine would only run at 50% its capability.

working switch nodes would be nice but not a major issue, i'm not sure they work in mental ray anyway.... but the matte opacity problem is pretty serious - i do a lot of scripted render passes that set matte opacity on shaders and if it doesn't work....

leuey

12-10-2005, 11:37 PM

Renderman itself isn't multi-threaded - never has been. But apparently prman 13 will be. As it is you can run 2 licences at the same time on your machine (1 for each proc.) so if you have enough RAM it will be faster than 1 instance running 2 threads.

-Greg

jeremybirn

12-11-2005, 12:15 AM

that is an absolute joke if its a $1000 renderer that's not multi-threaded... jesus even decade-old renderers are multi-threaded. basically a dual-core or dual-cpu machine would only run at 50% its capability.
Renderman running on renderfarms with multi-CPU machines works well and use 100% of the resources of the machines even though it is not multithreaded, because different render tasks are assigned to the two or four CPUs, so they are assigned different frames, or different portions of a split frame.

-jeremy

Arcon

12-11-2005, 09:31 AM

different render tasks are assigned to the two or four CPUs, so they are assigned different frames, or different portions of a split frame.

ahhh i see... i guess that's ok then :) ... just a quick question; would you actually have to buy two licences to run on seperate procs/cores or is a licence tied to a whole machine?

speaking as someone who has zero exposure to Renderman, but has used MR a lot for architecture work, is RfM meant to be seen as a viable alternative/competition to Mental Ray...? is it better at some things and weaker in other areas...?

i look forward to the day when there's an established userbase for RfM, since there's a lack of that i'm surprised there's no promotional documentation released (eg. detailed tech specs... or perhaps there is and i don't know where to look :) ).

MattBirkett-Smith

12-11-2005, 06:23 PM

Just out of interest has anyone done any fur/hair stuff with rmfm? I'm curious to see how the "deep" shadowing works and what the render times are like...

Als

12-11-2005, 08:32 PM

No, license is per machine.
I was sceptical about multithread too, until I've seen it working.
It's lightspeed fast.
Displacement, Motion Blur, DOF, all at the same time, any resolutions, any size of texture maps, depth shadows, etc.
I'm certain more displacement maping could improve look on your renderings.
But it's also crazy fast.:buttrock:
It's very hard to tell how much you would benefit from it, but it's worth a shot if you can.
I also thing it would be really great alternative and possibly you would use both, on different projects, or even maybe combine them...
Check for more information on their website.

I guess my only objection is that you can't download and test it before buying. But then they do have money back garantee. :deal:
I don't see the reason for them to explain more about renderman since it's been there for such a long time, and there is a lot of information about it on the internet. For starters:
http://www.renderman.org/
http://www.rendermanacademy.com/
https://renderman.pixar.com/

RMfM is just real easy interface for rendering maya shaders etc. with renderman.
I was really thrilled with the demo and please see how fast it is for yourself.
It renderers hair and fur, with depthshadows and the look is great.
Plus corals in "Finding Nemo" were just one shader! :)

Als

ahhh i see... i guess that's ok then :) ... just a quick question; would you actually have to buy two licences to run on seperate procs/cores or is a licence tied to a whole machine?
speaking as someone who has zero exposure to Renderman, but has used MR a lot for architecture work, is RfM meant to be seen as a viable alternative/competition to Mental Ray...? is it better at some things and weaker in other areas...?
i look forward to the day when there's an established userbase for RfM, since there's a lack of that i'm surprised there's no promotional documentation released (eg. detailed tech specs... or perhaps there is and i don't know where to look :) ).

Jozvex

12-11-2005, 11:17 PM

Just out of interest has anyone done any fur/hair stuff with rmfm? I'm curious to see how the "deep" shadowing works and what the render times are like...

Mental Ray has a similar feature to deep shadowmaps in it's Detail Shadowmaps. They're shadowmaps that take into account transparency and other usually-raytracing-only feature.

I'm just telling you in case you want to try them out too! I wouldn't mind seeing some RMFM tests of them too though.

Venkman

12-12-2005, 02:55 PM

I was sceptical about multithread too, until I've seen it working.
It's lightspeed fast.
Displacement, Motion Blur, DOF, all at the same time, any resolutions, any size of texture maps, depth shadows, etc.
I'm certain more displacement maping could improve look on your renderings.
But it's also crazy fast.:buttrock:RMfM is just real easy interface for rendering maya shaders etc. with renderman.
I was really thrilled with the demo and please see how fast it is for yourself.
It renderers hair and fur, with depthshadows and the look is great.
Plus corals in "Finding Nemo" were just one shader! :)

How would you say RMfM compares to third party engines such as Cebas Final Render (coming soon for Maya) and Turtle Render (available now)? Both of these products hype speed as the major selling point, but renderers such as Final Render also do things like physical sky.

Would it simply be worth getting and learning for resume purposes? Thanks for any input!

Als

12-13-2005, 12:09 AM

I have nothing against Turtle or Final render. The images also look great and high quallity.
But I think that main strenght of renderman it's experience.
All the renderers look great, but how DEEP they go?
Renderman was used on almost all major CG movies, including all Pixar and ILM, WETA... movies so far (please tell me if I'm wrong).
I don't think that any of other off-the-shelf renderers has the speed of renderman, specialy on displacement maping+motion blur+depth of field+etc. all in the same time, without sweat and working!

I also like Vray and Maxwell, but I think that all of them have their value for different types of projects, but I'm certain that you shouldn't decide without trying it for yourself on your usual type of projects and decide then.

It's like buying a car, you have to do a test drive first!

What I also like about renderman is certainly it's powerfull shading language.
RMfM is great way of gradually learning renderman shaders - using maya shaders for majority of materials, but slowly building your own library of renderman shaders.

Als

How would you say RMfM compares to third party engines such as Cebas Final Render (coming soon for Maya) and Turtle Render (available now)? Both of these products hype speed as the major selling point, but renderers such as Final Render also do things like physical sky.

Would it simply be worth getting and learning for resume purposes? Thanks for any input!

mustique

12-13-2005, 12:52 AM

...

It's like buying a car, you have to do a test drive first!...

Als

Hey I don't give the car dealer my credit card just for a test drive! :D

Venkman

12-13-2005, 05:43 AM

Hey I don't give the car dealer my credit card just for a test drive! :D

Yowza, that's true. But I don't think Cebas offered a FR2 demo for Cinema 4d when they released that.

Although Turtle Render does have a fully functioning demo. But at the same price? I'd be tempted to go with the brand name. I'll try out turtle and perhaps plunk down $1000 to test RMfM

Arcon

12-13-2005, 08:42 AM

I have nothing against Turtle or Final render. The images also look great and high quallity.
But I think that main strenght of renderman it's experience.
All the renderers look great, but how DEEP they go?
Renderman was used on almost all major CG movies, including all Pixar and ILM, WETA...

RMfM has been used for absolutely nothing. there's PRman, and then there's renderman for maya. i know its renderman technology but its not the same style of package, just like Mental ray for maya using maya nodes is completely different to writing mental ray shaders for standalone, the latter requireing much more experience. when MRfM was initially released in 4.5 it had some nice features that were cool at the time, but pretty much sucked for a lot of practical production requirements, even on a small scale.

by not making more information available about RfM, its hard to get past that initial "the first release is gonna suck" concept...

i havn't seen any renders with RfM posted here on CGtalk (i'd be keen to see some links though :) ). there are already a few known integration issues with RfM, and little is known about if it will offer small shops and freelancers the power and flexibility of mental ray for maya. MRfM can produce awesome results, and its been around for a few releases, and its free. i'm not saying i wouldn't try out RfM, but from a marketing point of view i would think it would be hard to pull a lot of people away from MR.

art_3d

12-13-2005, 10:19 AM

Renderman for maya is the basically the same renderman as in Pro tools
the differences mainly are in the lack of rib generation and most of the
advanced functions but it is the same renderer. It seems like a hybrid
between pro server and using mayaman for conversion.

It has everything you need for production quality rendering such as
deep shadows, true motion blur, brickmaps ......... the list goes on
after using PRman in production and testing renderman for maya
the only real issues are the lack of advanced stuff which unless
you a render TD you would not touch anyway.

It's quality in terms of nurb's tesselation, true displacement and
DOF are not comparable to any other renderer. I know this because
of testing both MR for maya and PRman in production and MR
simply is not able to compete with the compartive quality in
renderman whether using pro server or RMfm. Mr may have all the
bells and whistles but it terms of quality PRman is well in front the
deep shadowing alone is worth the money and renders fur like
no other renderer I have tested. Mr's detail shadow maps do not compare.
That is not to say that MR is bad it is a great renderer just in the 4 years
of production testing PRman was much more suited to the complex scenes
of production.

Als

12-13-2005, 04:44 PM

I just want to add that I'm really happy with mental ray look and many of the great shaders which are outhere. Also they've speed it up and all of that.
Still, I don't like the fact that like in maya I have to spend ages to do proper tesselations and aproximations. It's not only that you need to be really involved to understand it all, and know the render inside workings and whole monte carlo bussiness, but in spite of this, you need to do lot's of test renders to be on the certain side. And even then the motion blur render times are really bad and it takes a while, that almost there I say it, it's easier to setup motion blur on maya render then on MR.
Still you can do great images with MR, but the point is it's so MUCH EASIER to do it with MRfM. Displacement quality with MRfM is the best there is, and still with no involvement from the operator, you don't have to change geometries, tesselations etc.
On the top of the RMfM renders Subds, as maya would, which is just briliant. Many times it's really easy to use them, and I'm still not happy how this works in MR.
If I'm missing something please let me know, I'd understand if I'm not as well informed about MR as you are.
Also please see it first how it works, then you can comment better...

Als

RMfM has been used for absolutely nothing. there's PRman, and then there's renderman for maya. i know its renderman technology but its not the same style of package, just like Mental ray for maya using maya nodes is completely different to writing mental ray shaders for standalone, the latter requireing much more experience. when MRfM was initially released in 4.5 it had some nice features that were cool at the time, but pretty much sucked for a lot of practical production requirements, even on a small scale.

by not making more information available about RfM, its hard to get past that initial "the first release is gonna suck" concept...

i havn't seen any renders with RfM posted here on CGtalk (i'd be keen to see some links though :) ). there are already a few known integration issues with RfM, and little is known about if it will offer small shops and freelancers the power and flexibility of mental ray for maya. MRfM can produce awesome results, and its been around for a few releases, and its free. i'm not saying i wouldn't try out RfM, but from a marketing point of view i would think it would be hard to pull a lot of people away from MR.

depleteD

12-13-2005, 07:42 PM

oWOwowoowwowowowowow
k this renderman thing is so fast omfg. We need to start a sticky thread somehow

Arcon

12-13-2005, 07:49 PM

It has everything you need for production quality rendering such as
deep shadows, true motion blur,
It's quality in terms of nurb's tesselation, true displacement and
DOF are not comparable to any other renderer.

thanks for your detailed reply - heh i havn't acutally used nurbs for a few years. deep shadows and its global illumination options/performance in animation are the main things i'd be interested in (being in architecture visualization, we don't really do a lot of blur/FX type animation but i can see how it would be useful for more of a film environment). if they offer the same 30 day guarantuee here in NZ then i will probably end up checking it out :)

Arcon

12-13-2005, 07:56 PM

It's not only that you need to be really involved to understand it all, and know the render inside workings and whole monte carlo bussiness, but in spite of this, you need to do lot's of test renders to be on the certain side. And even then the motion blur render times are really bad and it takes a while, that almost there I say it, it's easier to setup motion blur on maya render then on MR.
Als

i wouldn't normally use motion-blur from either renderer but use a seperate shader pass, same for DOF, gives you more versatility. but having said that i don't really do a lot of blur type animation these days. the subD and nurbs support in RfM is good, for people who use it - but in my line of work its all polys so it doesn't really matter - my main concern would be GI, of which i know nothing about in RfM, so i'll probably just have to stop posting and try it out :)

depleteD

12-13-2005, 08:12 PM

ArconThe Gi in RfM is so crazy cool and pretty freaking fast. the thing that I really like about it is its ability to bake its solution. You can bake it to a 3D solution i think like an irradiance map or the other option of camera map. A 2d solution. How freaking cool is that.It works on an occlusion basis or a colorbleed basis. Its really hot stuff man. Soon as I started playing around with it I fell in love.

Als

12-13-2005, 08:41 PM

Oh, now it's easier to reply.
GI is really good, as well as Ambient occlusion.
But in your case the difference would be in displacement mapping for outside bricks, roof and similar things. Then you can do really AMAZING photo real grass, which alone will give a nice look to your scenes. Then use paint effects to render lot's of trees, and I guess this is quite a starter to check out :)
Then once you have more time, you can make ONE shader for each of those materials, for example bricks, with setups for different colors, sizes, holes, dirtyness etc.
RM renders polygons with the light speed :eek:

But on the side you might want to try VRAY for maya as well, since I think it's really good for architectural visualisations. Again, depends on what kind of viz you do, and in which timeframe...

Als

i wouldn't normally use motion-blur from either renderer but use a seperate shader pass, same for DOF, gives you more versatility. but having said that i don't really do a lot of blur type animation these days. the subD and nurbs support in RfM is good, for people who use it - but in my line of work its all polys so it doesn't really matter - my main concern would be GI, of which i know nothing about in RfM, so i'll probably just have to stop posting and try it out :)

donvlatko

12-13-2005, 08:53 PM

how this renderman handel big map size???

wigal

12-13-2005, 08:55 PM

Could somebody please post some GI and AmbOcc renders so we can see the quality alongside with the render duration :scream:

thanx

Als

12-13-2005, 09:15 PM

With ease. As far as I know there is no limit on size of textures, number of textures, nor the resolution you want to render.
I'm not certain yet how renderman's Maketexture
works in this case, but I guess it should.
Could someone add more to this.
I guess there might be some limitations on windows based on ammount of RAM, but I still don't think this might be a problem for you...

Als

how this renderman handles big map size???

depleteD

12-13-2005, 09:31 PM

So anyway this ends my 6 hour experiment with renderman. Really easy to use. Simple Concepts. And damn, the render pass outputs are such a dream. Soooo nice. I always wanted to do a subsurface scatter pass. images/icons/icon10.gif

Screw Christmas Merry Rendering images/icons/icon10.gif

Fifth_miracle

12-13-2005, 10:36 PM

True, but you can't make a digital copy of a car though can you... Piracy is a serious issue these days, and its only getting worse.

alexentremont

12-13-2005, 11:15 PM

This thread is 4 pages long, and not a single picture...

sacslacker

12-13-2005, 11:44 PM

Unfortunately none of the images I'm rendering can be uploaded and all my tests have been fairly lame. Hopefully once I clear up some of my work I can upload a few decent quality tests. I don't want to turn anyone off from the renderer because of my lameness. =)

It is a really nice renderer and the Deep Shadows with motion blur on fur is pretty much crazy fun. Not to mention the extremely fast render times. I personally love it.

depleteD

12-14-2005, 12:06 AM

ANyone know how RfM handles Shave?

Arcon

12-14-2005, 06:40 AM

But on the side you might want to try VRAY for maya as well, since I think it's really good for architectural visualisations. Again, depends on what kind of viz you do, and in which timeframe...
Als

thanks for the info guys - i really appreciate it. i'll buy it in jan i think when i have some spare time. Vray renders look reasonably well lit, and its good for quick GI setups, but from the renders i've seen i don't think its got mental ray's scalability. i wouldn't rate turtle at all... at least not from the renders i've seen of it.

its all about radiosity for me, if RfM can do *animated* GI at high quality without any issues, and its fast, then i would definitely spend $1K on it.

hmmm.... it would be really cool if someone posted a really simplistic 5 second highres test animation... a ball bouncing around a box with animated camera or something... with GI... [sigh] ;)

Als

12-14-2005, 07:22 AM

I think shave can export RIB files, which RfM doesn't support, so I guess you would need full prman license for this.
I also think shave can replace "shaved hair" with geometry, therefore it's probably possible to do some hack.
Then again shave is rendering as well as "hair maker".
You probably want to integrate it with the rest of maya environment...
Contact Joe about this and suggest him the idea.
If they made mi and rib export, they might consider making it work with RfM too.

On the other hand, RfM does really high quality render with fur and hair render, with all options you might need for hair, so maybe you don't need it?

Als

ANyone know how RfM handles Shave?

sonicstrawbery

12-14-2005, 09:54 AM

Ok we got it and now i need some time to get my hands seriously in it, apparently it is damn fast and easy to use :bounce:

i'll post renders soon !

BOSAH

12-14-2005, 03:04 PM

Had a small play with Renderman for Maya on a friends PC today. The speed vs quality of results is well.. amazing. Particularly impressed with the SSS output. Below is a textured head, the shader was a lambert. The render quality settings are defaults, the SSS attributes are tweaked somewhat from default (colour entry/exit tint, filter scale, scatter strength). The light is a standard spotlight but with Renderman deepshadows on, again just defaults. Model is 7000 polys(ish). The first image is with a Scattering Free Path of 5, the second with a Scattering Free Path of 20. Both took about 20 seconds to render on a lowly 1.4Ghz P4.

Edit : Annoyingly we couldnt seem to get SSS to work with a Renderman enviroment light though for some nice occlusion shadows.

avisgrafik

12-14-2005, 04:07 PM

how to make global illumination in renderman somebody show this stuff...:argh:

Fifth_miracle

12-14-2005, 04:38 PM

Bosah,

Hey how does the SSS work in RfM, is it like the Misss shader in MRfM? Ie. a pain in the ass to use or is it faily intuitive?

BOSAH

12-14-2005, 04:59 PM

Bosah,

Hey how does the SSS work in RfM, is it like the Misss shader in MRfM? Ie. a pain in the ass to use or is it faily intuitive?

It is extremely easy to setup. All renderman attributes can be accessed by just adding the attributes to your existing shader or light. Here be a screenie of the interface. It adds a brickmap pass automatically to your material once the attr is added, theres none of the MR lightmap shennanigans.

DoomGen

12-14-2005, 05:13 PM

Has anyone tried network rendering and being able to send different jobs to different processors on dual core machine. If i sent a render to a mchine that was rendering on one processor would it automatically start on the second processor??

Thanks

Venkman

12-14-2005, 05:57 PM

I'd be interested in what people thought of Renderman vs. FinalRender 2 from Cebas. It sounds like they have many similar features, although FR2 is multithreaded. That interests me greatly.

So far, I have seen very impressive output from FR2, the lighting controls look oustanding and the speed is supposed to be awesome.

I wonder how it would handle displacements, etc. which people have posted here as strengths. I know FR2 does handle subd's at render time:
http://finalrender.com/products/feature.php?UD=10-7888-35-788&PID=52&FID=469

It also handles software and hardware particles:
http://finalrender.com/products/feature.php?UD=10-7888-35-788&PID=52&FID=470

The C4d people are raving about the quality of FR2. For me on the Mac, the battle is between FR2 and Renderman.

Fifth_miracle

12-14-2005, 06:09 PM

Bosah,

Thanks for posting that up. It looks really simple to use. Have you tried rendering normal maps with it? I'm also wondering if it can handle 32-bit displacement maps. I know PRman can but, I wonder if RfM can since it uses Maya's default displacement node. If I recall correctly the Maya software renderer can only handle 16-bit textures.

sacslacker

12-14-2005, 06:25 PM

I'd be interested in what people thought of Renderman vs. FinalRender 2 from Cebas. It sounds like they have many similar features, although FR2 is multithreaded. That interests me greatly.

So far, I have seen very impressive output from FR2, the lighting controls look oustanding and the speed is supposed to be awesome.

I wonder how it would handle displacements, etc. which people have posted here as strengths. I know FR2 does handle subd's at render time:
http://finalrender.com/products/feature.php?UD=10-7888-35-788&PID=52&FID=469

It also handles software and hardware particles:
http://finalrender.com/products/feature.php?UD=10-7888-35-788&PID=52&FID=470

The C4d people are raving about the quality of FR2. For me on the Mac, the battle is between FR2 and Renderman.

FR2 does look good no doubt.

RMfM handles displacements very well and handles subd's very well. It handles all of Maya's particle types very well and I have to say, using Renderman's deep shadows on hardware, multi streaks is pretty darn cool. Nothing like a ton of self shadowed, motion blurred particles right there in the renderer.

From my understanding Renderman is heading in the multithreaded direction but to be honest, this is the fastest renderer I've ever seen and the fact that you can put a frame on each processor makes it that much better. I'm extremely happy with the way RMfM turned out. I hope others feel the same.

Venkman

12-14-2005, 06:38 PM

FR2 does look good no doubt.

RMfM handles displacements very well and handles subd's very well. It handles all of Maya's particle types very well and I have to say, using Renderman's deep shadows on hardware, multi streaks is pretty darn cool. Nothing like a ton of self shadowed, motion blurred particles right there in the renderer.

OK, you are appealing to my lust for awesome particle effects. Can you show me a shot of what you describe above? Can Maya not self shadow particles without a 3rd party solution like Renderman?

From my understanding Renderman is heading in the multithreaded direction but to be honest, this is the fastest renderer I've ever seen and the fact that you can put a frame on each processor makes it that much better. I'm extremely happy with the way RMfM turned out. I hope others feel the same.

Getting the node locked version would let me put a frame on each processor, from what I read. Does it automatically do this or do you have to render out one sequence on one processor and another sequence on the other processor? It would be nice if it did it by itself.

Thanks for your replies, I know I ask a lot of questions. :argh:

benwatt

12-14-2005, 06:48 PM

Bosah,

Thanks for posting that up. It looks really simple to use. Have you tried rendering normal maps with it? I'm also wondering if it can handle 32-bit displacement maps. I know PRman can but, I wonder if RfM can since it uses Maya's default displacement node. If I recall correctly the Maya software renderer can only handle 16-bit textures.

RfM can definitely handle 32-bit displacement maps just fine, Scott Eaton from Escape Studios demonstrated this at the recent Pixar Renderman event in London and the following day in more depth in a 3December London workshop - looks to work very well :)

lazzhar

12-14-2005, 07:22 PM

OK, you are appealing to my lust for awesome particle effects. Can you show me a shot of what you describe above? Can Maya not self shadow particles without a 3rd party solution like Renderman?

.. :argh:

Maya particles are great but when it comes to their renderings they are a pain in the a$$
You cannot render Streaks and card except throught hardware where Renderman has no problem with them. Not only that, they respect DOF and motion blur and shadows .

Venkman

12-14-2005, 07:43 PM

Maya particles are great but when it comes to their renderings they are a pain in the a$$
You cannot render Streaks and card except throught hardware where Renderman has no problem with them. Not only that, they respect DOF and motion blur and shadows .

Thanks. That is a major factor for me. My animation work will make extensive use of particles and it is good to know Renderman handles it so nicely. I'll bug the Cebas people on how their renderer will handle particles (FR does do them internally, but we'll see if they self shadow or respect DOF).

Can anyone comment on the how shadows behave when lighting with HDRI or final gather type renderings? When using Cinema 4d I had one hell of a time trying to keep shadows from flickering when animating camera movement or objects in HDRI or "Radiosity" type scenes. From what I have seen this is a strength of Cebas FR.

art_3d

12-14-2005, 08:07 PM

I will elaborate a little further on my previous post, Venkman I was lucky enough
to test PRman MR and some of the max renderers as the studio used max as well
for certain shots. This was all long form stuff and some of the scenes had thousands
of characters in. The only renderer able to deal with that complexity was PRman.
Final render is cool but is memory hungry, Vray is probably closet to PRman in terms
of memory usage and quality but they are all just playing catch up really PRman is
that good and rock solid.

In terms of partcles it renders hundreds of thousands of them casting shadows
and motion blurring with ease there really is'nt another renderer that can do this.
I am starting to sound like a bit of a fan boy. so I will leave it at that.
The gi and stuff may not be as accomplished as other renderers but that will
come as raytracing is pretty new to PRman it is a REYES renderer after all.
Vray is a good alternative if you don't like PRman but for huge scenes
rendered with extremley high quality with the optical feel of a real camera lense
nothing comes close IMHO.

hope this helps

Venkman

12-14-2005, 08:21 PM

hope this helps

Thanks art_3d, that does help a lot!

There isn't too much info out there on Renderman for Maya yet so I've have to bug people on these forums. I feel a little like Pixar thinks it doesn't need to show screenshots, examples, provide manuals or detailed specs, etc- because they can go on name recognition alone. Obviously the product is top notch- but to people new to Maya in general and 3rd party rendering engines in particular, it would help to have a lot more info at my fingertips.

If they do an event somewhere in Maryland I'll go to it.

avisgrafik

12-14-2005, 08:40 PM

how is renderman GI settings :twisted: has anybody know GI controls

madmanmagic

12-14-2005, 09:11 PM

Hi, So has it been determined yet if Pixar Renderman works on Win2K?

Perhaps someone bought the XP version and tried it on Win2K?

Also does it work with Maya 5?
thanks
dan

thev2

12-14-2005, 09:29 PM

You should probably keep in mind that the different renderers are created for different purposes. Renderman was primarily designed as an animation renderer for film work, whereas renderers like V-Ray were designed to provide accurate materials and light simulation through raytracing which are important for archvis work. If you try to use Renderman for architectural interiors, you will almost certainly fail as it is not designed for it. Rendering thousands of characters with a raytracer will also be difficult as most raytracers are not designed for this task.

slipknot66

12-14-2005, 09:49 PM

Well, here is a simple test i did using GI with renderman, what i did, was just to enable Raytracing under the render globals, and enable the Environment Light.Compared to mentalray, it was really slow, but again, im new to renderman.
Renderman took 11:33mins, using the default settings, i didnt change anything
Mentalray 3:17 FG rays 80 min 0.3 max 30

meshman

12-14-2005, 09:56 PM

quite different in result i must say, More details in the renderman rendered oclusion. I must experiment as soon as i finish my curent project here at work.

barbapapa

12-15-2005, 01:12 AM

what about making caustics.? any one has tried?

lumberyard

12-15-2005, 02:23 AM

hmm, the renderman render looked much more detailed, could this just be lighting settings? perhaps it would look different if tweaked to clean it up, wonder how much longer it would take though to get a smooth render

appppo

12-15-2005, 02:33 AM

I just wanna see exact comparison with parameters or settings of renderers.:sad:

Venkman

12-15-2005, 03:51 AM

I just wanna see exact comparison with parameters or settings of renderers.

I second that! Perhaps we could persuade our generous posters in this thread to approach cgsociety about doing a full featured article? hint hint... ;)

This renderer is just dying to be put through its paces and dissected for our enjoyment/education.

mayaxmayax

12-15-2005, 04:27 AM

this is my test for renderman with
particles
MotionBlur
Depth Of field
Displasement

http://img226.imageshack.us/img226/8701/rendermanx5hq.jpg

sonicstrawbery

12-15-2005, 06:16 AM

Hi, So has it been determined yet if Pixar Renderman works on Win2K?

Perhaps someone bought the XP version and tried it on Win2K?

Sure it works, i make working the same version on xp and 2k without problem.

About caustics i see in the help you can make them with adding attributes to a shader also but it looks more complicated than the basic stuff... i'm looking forward

keep posting guys

ajsfuxor

12-15-2005, 08:07 AM

Care to post the render times?

Also, would be nice to a comparable render to Mental Ray. Stills are good and all, but we need comparison renders with times posted. We all know Renderman can produce beautiful renders, thats not the point, but i think most people want to know the speed it can do them in with displacement, DOF and motion blur in COMPARISON to MR. Ambient Occlusion pass is the thing im really interested in. Is it alot slower than MR?

meshman

12-15-2005, 08:10 AM

I think vaustics is not suported in the curent version. as from the rfm maya suport forum

"Unfortunately, caustics aren't supported in this release, but will probably be made available in a future release (2.0)."

Cheers
Peter

MasonDoran

12-15-2005, 01:39 PM

can u render using all cpus on a dual core or quad core system?

sonicstrawbery

12-15-2005, 02:03 PM

ok sorry about that, it's confuse, there's a page in the help files that talk about it but it just explain how to write a caustic support shader in code...but correct me if i'm wrong, if i write the little lines to add caustics and then i import my shader it should works no ?

benwatt

12-15-2005, 02:11 PM

can u render using all cpus on a dual core or quad core system?

Yes, you can.

MasonDoran

12-15-2005, 03:47 PM

next question.....does renderman use photons or something similar for rendering interiors with bounce light coming from an external light source?

T-R

12-15-2005, 04:39 PM

I was wondering if perhaps some renderman users could possibly use this BENCHMARK SCENE (http://zoorender.com/html/benchmark_mental.htm)
and post some results if they have the time:drool:.

MasonDoran

12-15-2005, 04:59 PM

that is a mental ray scene with mental ray specific render settings....which would not really apply to renderman

avisgrafik

12-15-2005, 05:30 PM

where is the Gı settings And how is renderman irradiance output ????????? :banghead:

T-R

12-15-2005, 05:34 PM

that is a mental ray scene with mental ray specific render settings....which would not really apply to renderman
Right. I meant to set up the renderman scene to achieve similar results to view the GI and speed which we will be able to compare the results posted in the link. Just out of curiosity. I didnt meant to open the scene and press render:curious:

mustique

12-15-2005, 06:27 PM

Are there any eyecandy shaders published for Rfm. Or do those at highend3D work?
Cause AFAIK Rfm is said to be supporting shaders created in other renderman products.

Als

12-15-2005, 07:10 PM

Works on Win 2K, but alas, there is no version for maya 5, and I don't see that there will be.
Maya 7.5 is just around the corner, so I can't see them wasting time on version 5.

I think that it RfM can be nicely combined with other renderers if you need some other features, and as far I'm aware, some people already are combining it with MR.
What RfM is offering a definite rendering power, when you need it. Also if gives so much more easy of use when you have tight deadline etc.
As far as GI solution, I think the RfM looks much better, plus it is easy to bake it as well.
But I do expect lot more improvement in that area in new version, more so because of expected multithread rendering.

Al

Hi, So has it been determined yet if Pixar Renderman works on Win2K?

Perhaps someone bought the XP version and tried it on Win2K?

Also does it work with Maya 5?
thanks
dan

sonicstrawbery

12-15-2005, 07:13 PM

Hey guys i got a question about some features in RFM, how can i hide my env. light spheres after i created it, i don't want to see it through camera...i tried playing with passes and adding attributes (Camera visibility..?) but nothing work, i always got my probe behind :\

Then it seems that my computer doesn't like Radiosity shadowing method applied with my hdri...it works well with occlusion but when i choose Color Bleeding, maya freeze and i can't do anything... Does it a takes so much time ?

for info i'm running it on a p4 1.4 ghz, 512 mo

cheers

BillB

12-16-2005, 12:22 AM

Yes, you can (Render on dual and quad cores).
Though it's not multithreaded - you'd be rendering a frame on each CPU, right, with the RAM overhead that entails?

caseybasichis

12-16-2005, 04:01 AM

It seems that camera projection in rfm is broken. Im taking a simple color pass render of a model rendering it out and then reapplying it to the model as a surfaceshader with a camera projection. The alignment is fine in both the Maya Software render and MR but is screwy in renderman...

Can anyone confirm this?

BTW its a 2048x1556 tif (maybe a cin i forget)

Thanks

meshman

12-16-2005, 10:07 AM

rfm1.1 is out now.

meshman

12-16-2005, 10:09 AM

Its the overscan setting that rfm dont take inn cosideration in 1.0 I havent got time to test this in 1.1 yet.

It seems that camera projection in rfm is broken. Im taking a simple color pass render of a model rendering it out and then reapplying it to the model as a surfaceshader with a camera projection. The alignment is fine in both the Maya Software render and MR but is screwy in renderman...

Can anyone confirm this?

BTW its a 2048x1556 tif (maybe a cin i forget)

Thanks

alexentremont

12-16-2005, 11:06 AM

rfm1.1 is out now.

What's new (or fixed) in this version?

meshman

12-16-2005, 03:49 PM

The list below details the changes and bug fixes from RfM 1.0 to RfM 1.1.

Max reflection and refraction depths are now interpreted the same way as
Maya. In scenes with a lot of refraction RfM was noticeably slower due to
issuing more reflection rays than maya.

Added support for "Display Mode" attribute on image plane nodes.

Added support for using spriteNum and spriteNumPP for texture cycling.

The commandline Render utility now accepts a -crop flag for specifying a
crop window.

Per layer globals overrides in Maya 7 now work for checkbox and option
menu controls.

Fixed a bug where bald areas would appear on furry meshes with polygons
that occuppied very little UV space.

Fixed a bug where artifacts appeared around the edges of surfaces with
blinn material when lit by area lights.

Added support for camera's film back settings.

Texture filter attributes now respond as expected.

Fixed a bug where some texture projections were excessively blurry.

Added support for fur dynamics via hair system attractors.

8 bit images are now dithered by default.

Fixed a bug where image file sequences wouldn't work when motion blur was
enabled.

The conditional node now works.

Texture reference objects now work for objects which not deforming.

Previously they only worked for deforming objects.

Added "Diffuse Ray Shading" to the optional geometric
attributes. This can be added to objects with shaders whose transparency
should be taken into account when computing occlusion.

Removed some settings from the Manage Attributes dialog for selected
geometry. They were very unlikely to be useful, but to renable them the
following can be added to the user's RenderMan_for_Maya.ini:

Fixed a bug where directional shadows could disappear when light had large
scale.

Fixed a bug where batch renders started via the options dialog would not
start in the background in Maya7.

Added support for dongle based licensing.

mverta

12-16-2005, 04:54 PM

Boy, scant few posts on Renderman considering how significant an engine it is, especially compared to mental ray. Perhaps there'll be more once the crack comes out. Cynical, you say? Perish the thought.

_Mike

Venkman

12-16-2005, 05:06 PM

Boy, scant few posts on Renderman considering how significant an engine it is, especially compared to mental ray.

It is a little frustrating. I want to know more, but it looks like buying it with the money back offer is the best way to go. I haven't seen a site do a huge rundown of it yet like they have with Turtle:

http://www.deathfall.com/feature.php?op=showcontent&id=37

I really want an indepth look at it. Here's hoping CG networks has a reviewer do a write up.

chrisWhite

12-17-2005, 12:02 AM

I love that I was able to render out a scene with objects that had subD levels over Maya's suggested limit that crashed both Maya software and Mental Ray and it rendered it out fast and flawlessly.

Arcon

12-17-2005, 05:44 AM

I love that I was able to render out a scene with objects that had subD levels over Maya's suggested limit

..yeah... i just read a thread about a problem with artifacts and GI with RfM:

if it turns out RfM can't do GI flawlessly in animation then its basically a thousand dollar lemon - end of story.

Right, because we all know how common rendering GI for every frame in an animation is.

Heck, I'd bet that's why Renderman never got popular in the first place. :D

Arcon

12-17-2005, 07:26 AM

Right, because we all know how common rendering GI for every frame in an animation is.

Heck, I'd bet that's why Renderman never got popular in the first place. :D

erm, having an animation solution for GI and/or FG is one of the most fudamental requirements of most 3D industries - i don't mean re-calculating it every frame obviously ;) there just has to be a quality solution that works without artifacts and doesn't involve baking. like i said the only post i've seen using GI (not even animated) had artifacts...

lumberyard

12-17-2005, 09:47 AM

could have been the settings... doesnt seem wise to even include the feature in the first release if it at no point produces good results...
even if that is the case though, only one way to go from here :)

slipknot66

12-17-2005, 10:16 AM

like i said the only post i've seen using GI (not even animated) had artifacts...
Thats not the only one..
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=292304&page=6&pp=15
was just a simple test....im sure they will fix the problems in future versions, i was just reading this post
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=299737

FrozenSun

12-17-2005, 05:08 PM

Hey everyone. First off Renderman is impressive. Also i wanted to say, i guess nobody knows this but you do not need to buy it to try it out. You can simply register on the forum and then you email them to ask to evaluate Renderman. They will then set you up with the download and voila you get to try it out.

Cheers,

FrozenSun

FrozenSun

12-17-2005, 05:08 PM

Also i believe it is supported for Maya 7, it only makes sense i think.

FrozenSun

depleteD

12-17-2005, 06:14 PM

hey those artifacts
i did some hdrs with out artifacts.
i will post them soon,
the important thing is that u have it on color bleeding method sampling=sampled and not filtered.
Ill post images soon.

GI like EnvLight from RMfM, the result and speed is not markable. You can read the Args from the pic, right?http://forums.cgsociety.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=86603

hi thanks for the tests - can't tell much about GI from a ball-on-plane scene, what i will do [today if i get time] is make a small well-lit scene and post renders from mental ray for maya (rendered in a single pass using only maya shaders).

it will be reasonably simple and include radiosity effects and shadows, transparency etc. i'll also make the scene file available, which someone can download and render with RfM, and see if they can get similar results. obviously the images don't have to match exactly because they're from different renderers, but a quality/time comparision would be interesting, I will post it soon :)

depleteD

12-19-2005, 12:22 AM

Hey guys, do u guys have or know of a location of a renderman shader that can have mappable reflection blur, and mappable reflection decay? like vrays or brazils?

__macbeth__

12-19-2005, 08:52 AM

I am getting shadows in diffuse pass.. I realy don`t want them there.. After all, what the shadow pass is for, if all shadows is baked to diffuse pass? That looks like bug to me.. Any way to fix it?

Our studio has been doing some RMFM testing and it looks like that's what we will be using in the future. The speed with which it handles displacement and motion blur compared to maya and mental ray is certainly a factor in that. As a bit of background we used to use Lightwave for rendering and have an established pipline for maya to lw. Although cost was a factor I'm sure now that a maya animation to maya/RMFM pipline will be welcome by many in the studio.

P

Venkman

12-20-2005, 07:57 PM

Thanks for the info and the link. I will be keeping my eye on this vs. Final Render 2 in the future.

katisss

12-21-2005, 10:48 AM

i'm testing motion blur on animated car tires.
When the camera moves and zooms in on the tire it seems to shrink.
I tried all kind of shutter settings, subframe on /off etc. Very odd.
Anybody experienced something similar?

Arcon

12-24-2005, 10:33 AM

reviving this thread, i've finally had time to prepare a simple GI animation scene for comparison. (heh been a busy season).

mmmk, i've included a link to a maya scene on my website, and a link to a 100 frame animation rendered with MR in 6.5 (preview image shown). its not meant to be a detailed or realistic radiosity scene (i amplified FG just to see the effect), just use a few basic elements, including radiosity from a texture during an animated camera pan (texture included in zip file), textured transparency with radiosity, and raytraced area light shadows, and seeing that all of the above works in reflections. it will be interesting to compare texture sharpness and edge quality as well.

http://www.cipher.co.nz/wip/radiosity_test.mov (MJPEG quicktime, 4MB)

it doesn't matter if the RfM version looks slightly different, but the elements all need to be there in a single-pass render (it would be good to see a snapshot of frame1's alpha as well).

http://www.cipher.co.nz/wip/rad_test.jpg

ascii scene file here:

http://www.cipher.co.nz/wip/rad_test.zip

on an Athlon 64 X2 4400+ it took quite a while, about 50 mins to render this 100 frame animation, i think it was the use of an area light that killed the render time, and i upped the FG rays to 500 which was probably overkill.. lol. anyway if someone can be bothered rendering it with RfM that would be cool... if not i got some typing practice...

EDIT: forgot to add i rendered at 640x480.

akewt

12-24-2005, 12:08 PM

this would be very interesting to see. thanks for taking the time on this acron. i hope someone with rfm can respond :)

stephatkeen

12-28-2005, 01:46 PM

Hi,

I dont have RfM (RenderMan for Maya) but I have RAT 6.5.2 and prmanProserver 12.5.2
on an Apple powermac G5 2*2.3 Ghz.

If the same renderer for RfM and RAT/proserver.

So I have made the test of this very littl scene with global illum.

I render it in about 60 minutes on 1 cpu.

I think I have a comparable power of the Athlon, maybe slighty slower, but anyway, RenderMan is faster too. And if you take big scene, you will see more difference vs MentaRay.

RFM is NOT as good as the Renderman pro server with the artist tools
With the pro server and the arist tools you have a slim shader prgramm. You can mix all shader and wich have better results than the maya shader. i`ve test RFM and i`ve see the maya shader Attributes is worse for me personal. I use Prm pro and that has so good stuff in there, only thing is that its hard to learn for a newby but when you have spend a lot of time in there you can handle all tools =]
One thing, RFM doesnt support caustics hope in the next release :] (I wish more Renderman pics here in the 3d gallery) !!

[sry for my bad english]

donvlatko

12-28-2005, 07:09 PM

ok guys I have some problems with displacment.

I have import simple model in Zbrush and make some devide and make one simple stroke over his bely, as you can see from pic no.1 . Than I have export with multy displacmet 2 plugin in Zbrush as 4096. Than I have made simple lambert and attach that file to displacment and I leav alpha gain at 1 and alpha offset at -0.5 and I convert to sub and here is the render test pic no.2. You can see it's not same, why does anyknow why?
In Zbrush I also make small bump with bump material and I attach that to lamber and render and I got this strane black lines,,does anyone know why?
can someone help me?

Arcon

12-28-2005, 10:01 PM

If the same renderer for RfM and RAT/proserver.
So I have made the test of this very littl scene with global illum.
I render it in about 60 minutes on 1 cpu.
link to movie RAD2-RM.mov (ftp://ftp.nwavedigital.com/OUT/CGTALK/steph/RAD2-RM.mov)

Hi stephatkeen, thanks heaps for doing that test render.

a few things i noticed, the shadows in that movie look like depth/soft shadows, raytraced distance/area shadows like in the original will take a lot longer (or maybe the effect is there but not noticeable..?).

you're using the same MJPEG codec but the texture on the box is coming out a bit blurry... with some roping on the low angle - i'm hoping there would be a filtering method that can get it a bit sharper...?

maya's grid transparency texture doesn't quite seem to map correctly, you can see a slight overlap at the top, its more noticeable as the camera moves closer which is odd. its not a major issue but it shows integration and/or reading of maya texture nodes isn't quite there yet, and it could become a problem on larger scenes if a lot of textures needed adjusting for correct placement. as this isn't a RfM test maybe it wouldn't have that issue...?

can't find any fault with its speed though, it looks to be a fast renderer ;)

thanks again for doing the test, real-world comparisons make it a lot easier to size up a renderer's potential.

stephatkeen

12-28-2005, 11:39 PM

Hi stephatkeen, thanks heaps for doing that test render.

a few things i noticed, the shadows in that movie look like depth/soft shadows, raytraced distance/area shadows like in the original will take a lot longer (or maybe the effect is there but not noticeable..?).

indeed its an depth map shadow. I never use raytracing shadow with RM, shadow map are faster, better and more controlable. The power of RM is the ability to mix almost everything per object (scan line, ray-trace, indirect illum, HDRI, photon map, etc ...), its
not on/off for all the scene.

you're using the same MJPEG codec but the texture on the box is coming out a bit blurry... with some roping on the low angle - i'm hoping there would be a filtering method that can get it a bit sharper...?

I have seen that, I can decrease the shading rate to have more details, but you loose the black grid on the brightest color on your movie.

maya's grid transparency texture doesn't quite seem to map correctly, you can see a slight overlap at the top, its more noticeable as the camera moves closer which is odd. its not a major issue but it shows integration and/or reading of maya texture nodes isn't quite there yet, and it could become a problem on larger scenes if a lot of textures needed adjusting for correct placement. as this isn't a RfM test maybe it wouldn't have that issue...?

It's not a texture map, but a procedural and not calibrated like yours.
But I can say in RM we can take the place2dtexture and place3dtexture to map like in maya.

can't find any fault with its speed though, it looks to be a fast renderer ;)

thanks again for doing the test, real-world comparisons make it a lot easier to size up a renderer's potential.

RM can be very fast, but I have to admit that I have bake the radiosity ;-). In the last verion of RM you can bake almost everything, and optimize a lot. So you can use very expensive method of lighting/shading but just have to compute once per shot (for the fixed part of the shot, of course).

Here I work for a company who have used MR and Maya until now (we use now RM for our first feature film), we have made some comparisons MR-RM and in heavy scene, RM is ahead (better memory management).
But ok, RM is not easy to start, but you wont regret the effort after ... ;)

Kel Solaar

12-29-2005, 02:07 PM

RM can be very fast, but I have to admit that I have bake the radiosity ;-)

Not a very fairly test... Once the GI is baked it's take no time to calculate for the next frames and you didn't used raytraced shadows. Arcon have used Area Lights and didn't bake the GI.

stephatkeen

12-29-2005, 02:26 PM

RM is a smart renderer and I use that, that's all :)

sacslacker

12-29-2005, 06:59 PM

RFM is NOT as good as the Renderman pro server with the artist tools
With the pro server and the arist tools you have a slim shader prgramm. You can mix all shader and wich have better results than the maya shader. i`ve test RFM and i`ve see the maya shader Attributes is worse for me personal. I use Prm pro and that has so good stuff in there, only thing is that its hard to learn for a newby but when you have spend a lot of time in there you can handle all tools =]
One thing, RFM doesnt support caustics hope in the next release :] (I wish more Renderman pics here in the 3d gallery) !!

[sry for my bad english]

You can use slim generated shaders with RfM. Granted you don't get DSO's which kinda sucks (I'd like to use darktree with RfM).

Indeed it isn't PRMan but we all know that right? As far as quality, it's supposed to be the same renderer. In my opinion, it's one of the better deals out there right now.

Kel Solaar

12-29-2005, 07:23 PM

RM is a smart renderer and I use that, that's all :)
Yes of course but baking the gi or whatever you want is also possible in Mental Ray and the rendering time of Acron would have been cutted down if he did it, but his test was to show how the gi is stable and flicker free along an animation in the different renderer. So baking the gi and saying that the renderer is faster is a little bit cheating to my eyes :). (I don`t say that baking is bad, just that its not far for testing comparison)
Hope you dont mind :shrug:
Bye

stephatkeen

12-29-2005, 11:44 PM

Yes of course but baking the gi or whatever you want is also possible in Mental Ray and the rendering time of Acron would have been cutted down if he did it, but his test was to show how the gi is stable and flicker free along an animation in the different renderer. So baking the gi and saying that the renderer is faster is a little bit cheating to my eyes :). (I don`t say that baking is bad, just that its not far for testing comparison)
Hope you dont mind :shrug:
Bye

No problem Kel :)

But I like very much RM mainly for all the optimizations you can do.

Bye

stew

12-30-2005, 11:52 AM

One thing I notice in the little test movie is that in the MR version, the reflected "fence" flickers where it's a lot smoother in the PRMan version. I guess that's just one setting in the reflection setup for MR that needs to be changed. Still - antialiasing of reflected textures is a tricky thing, and proper handling of ray differentials is what separates a production renderer from a student project.

Arcon

12-30-2005, 10:04 PM

One thing I notice in the little test movie is that in the MR version, the reflected "fence" flickers where it's a lot smoother in the PRMan version.

that's a good observation - in any case i'd still like to see the movie actually rendered with RfM (without baking ;) ).

xeav

01-03-2006, 02:40 PM

Is there a help or something for RfM?

meshman

01-04-2006, 10:06 AM

when you buy it you get online help at the pixar forum and documentation

Pickman

01-13-2006, 10:48 PM

Heya guys, I have been testing rfm 1.0 for a month now, I have used all features and mainly experimented raytracing with AO and hdr, using in conjeunction with reflections attribute, I managed to get stunning images at a high time rendering cost, which is ok. I would love to start doing animated shots now, but i tried reusing my AO on still objects with moving camera and got some undersampling at different spots, did anyone managed rendering a 100 frames animation like 360° camera move around objects reusing AO pass ??

I'm really curious about that, I bet i didn't realize yet how to decrease or optimize rendering times, but images are really cool, especially shadows and reflections, wish i could animate the shots though, I would love to get feedback from other people, especially people who have tested the product in production pipeline.
I will post my shots if need be
THX a lot guys

bende.tuncay

01-13-2006, 11:15 PM

Hi I started a tread to ask the following question a couple of days ago and got no answers. And I thought that the ones who know the answer didn't see the tread. So I am re-asking the same question because I need the answer. I don't know if reasking the same question is against the forum rules or not and I am really sorry if I am being bothersome.

So here is my question:

"Is the usebackground shader supported by renderman for maya or is there another way to achieve the same result?
And any info about rfm and the ratcollector shader also would be great. Can it be used with renderman for maya or is it just for rat.
Any help will be appreciated."

Best regards

Davain

01-14-2006, 11:12 AM

... I would love to start doing animated shots now, but i tried reusing my AO on still objects with moving camera and got some undersampling at different spots, did anyone managed rendering a 100 frames animation like 360° camera move around objects reusing AO pass ??
to achieve this, first you need to do those things:

- turn off "Double Sided" on your geometry (in the "Render Stats")
- in "rmanMakeGlobalDiffuse3dPass" set "Phase" to "Once Per Job"
- in "rmanRenderGlobalDiffuse3dPass" tutn off "Cull Backfacing" and "Cull Hidden"

djx

01-14-2006, 12:33 PM

Pickman: Yes, post your shots please. I am interested in purchasing RfM oneday. So show us what we can expect.

(approx. render times and machine specs would be a real bonus too)

cheers
David

theazz

01-15-2006, 11:12 PM

im having trouble, our school has a licence and no one seems to know but were experiancing some serious issues. firstly all of our renders are flipped horizontally. in batch and frame. also when we batch render it always stops at a certain frame, usually in the 290 area. and finally we get flickering dancing noise intermitantly on our models. so when we batch some frames arwe clean and beautiful and others (even when nothing has moved) there is this awful dancing grey noise 'grain' over everything. i have a project due in 3 days. any help would be appreciated.

thanks

Azz

meshman

01-16-2006, 12:37 PM

whats your setings?

theazz

01-16-2006, 01:24 PM

the settings are varried as multiple people with different projects are experiacning this, these effects occur when using default settings, mainly only sampling rates changed. most scenes are just aroun 20k poly with a few lights, shadow maps, raytracing for reflection with some reflection blurring, (which flickers horribly). My scene uses a subdiv scheme (RfM feature) but many are experiancing this. something tells me this wackyness is just us then?

Pickman

01-16-2006, 10:16 PM

Heya guys, oki so i tried :

- turn off "Double Sided" on your geometry (in the "Render Stats")
- in "rmanMakeGlobalDiffuse3dPass" set "Phase" to "Once Per Job"
- in "rmanRenderGlobalDiffuse3dPass" tutn off "Cull Backfacing" and "Cull Hidden"

Two questions here, do you compute your AO on frame 1 then batchrender using reuse for your AO (which is what i did) ?

i Already had double sided and backface cull turned off, i still have square undersampling on borders and behind geometries...quite frustrating actually !
DJX, i promise i will post animated shots as soon as i get decent results...hopefully i'll get some these days lol, i'm testing it on a crappy machine P4, 2ghg with 2 gig of ram lol :-)

If anyone here want to post workflow for animated shot i'll be happy to hear it.
So far i have everything working, sss, reflections, which was quite tricky, hdr and ao...still waiting for ao on motion shots though...

Anyway, cool thread here, I'll be following it carefully, and will post feedback as soon as possible, I asked Gustavo braga for a few questions on his blog, i got some answeres, but the man wouldn't reply anymore, he must be busy !lol
I hope to hear from him soonish, and will report his feedback if I can get some answers !!!
good luck guys, I'll be offline on and off :-)

kvale

01-17-2006, 06:01 AM

I know it's been asked before, but has anyone figured out a way to achieve either a "use background" effect or at the very least get a diffuse pass that doesn't have shadows embedded into it?

Just FYI I've tried using the ratCollector as a RmFM shader as well as rolling my own Matte Shaders to no avail!

Thx.

eggsrgood

01-17-2006, 11:36 PM

hey guys,

so i'm loving Renderman, just started using it. Was wondering if anyone has an idea how I would go about using it to render Shave and Haircut hair. I just love the look of the deep shadows on the hair but don't really want to or know how to use Maya own hair system. Any thoughts on this matter? Cheers:shrug:

sacslacker

01-17-2006, 11:54 PM

From my understanding, Shave uses a DSO which means it will not work with RFM. DSOs have been disabled for various reasons.

I could be wrong so if you find a way, let us know because it'd be very cool to use.

I wish there was a way for Pixar to allow certain DSOs because I'd like to use Shave and also Darktree with RFM. I know why they aren't allowing DSOs but it'd be cool if there was a way to have some "approved" DSO list or something that would allow these to run. I doubt that's going to happen though.

eggsrgood

01-18-2006, 12:18 AM

thanks for the quick response. The thing is in the Shave ref manual it tells you away to export the curves to be used in PRman, but the code or explanation also, goes straight over my head. So I assume there must be a way, just no idea how. Something to do with exporting RI curves.:curious: Mental Ray for hair is just sooooooo slow.

alexentremont

01-18-2006, 06:00 PM

Someone asked the question (about Shave and RMfM) on the support forum, and a guy from Pixar answered:

"Not currently. Shave (as I understand it), creates a RenderMan procedural DLL to generate the hair data. RfM doesn't support procedurals. This was one of the limitations we placed on the renderer internal to RfM to get it at this pricepoint. Shave for Maya will work with our RAT package.".

eggsrgood

01-18-2006, 09:16 PM

thanks alexentremont, that's a shame but thanks for letting me know.

Fifth_miracle

01-19-2006, 02:14 AM

Renderman for Maya works great with Maya hair though! :beer:

mlmiller1983

01-25-2006, 03:43 PM

I hear Syflex works with RMfM but lack of support for Shave is dissappointing. Hopefully this will change in 2.0.

Fifth_miracle

01-25-2006, 09:05 PM

I'm running syflex with RfM with no problems. But that no surprise as syflex does not effect rendering at all while shave uses custom shaders that RfM doesn't support. Indeed maya shaders are not truly supported, at render time they are replaced be renderman equivalents. If Pixar hasn't created a RM equivalent for a particular shader, you are out of luck unless you know how to code in a custom renderman shader.

craigs

01-27-2006, 08:33 PM

As anybody experienced errors when mapping textures to SSS in RFM, I just get

Error: T02001 Can't open texture

tried even converting manually with the txmake function, no joy, hmmf, why is nothing ever simple.

meshman

01-27-2006, 08:41 PM

i experiensed that sss did not render but i think it was cause i got a brickmapp pass from a previos render, I killed it and tried again. But it doesent sound liuke the error you have.

alexentremont

01-28-2006, 01:13 PM

As anybody experienced errors when mapping textures to SSS in RFM, I just get

Error: T02001 Can't open texture

tried even converting manually with the txmake function, no joy, hmmf, why is nothing ever simple.
What do you mean exactly by "mapping textures to SSS"? Are you applying the texture to the color channel, or to one of the tint channels of SSS?

I just tried mapping a .tif file to the color channel of a material with SSS attributes and it works fine (it works too when I map the same file to the Scattering Entry Tint channel).

Fifth_miracle

01-28-2006, 09:09 PM

I've been able to map textures to the Tint and Albedo channels with no problems. Now mapping the Scatter Strength channel will throw errors, but if your wanting to control the scattering effect the Albedo channel is what you want its like overall color in MR's Misss shader.

Pixar will also reveal RenderMan for Maya 2.0, the latest version of Pixar’s acclaimed Maya rendering plug-in bringing RenderMan’s peerless feature film quality to all Maya artists. Version 2.0 incorporates multiple enhancements including multi-threading, ray-tracing optimizations, and Maya 8 compatibility. In addition, from the first day of the SIGGRAPH 2006 tradeshow, all new purchasers of the current RenderMan for Maya 1.2 will be offered a free upgrade to version 2.0 when it is released later in 2006.

Multi-threaded- YES!!! Now I will buy it!

Maya 8 compatibility? At least it will be ready! :)

jude3d

08-07-2006, 01:29 AM

pixar worked well on the new renderman. renderman 13 is really amazing, you could implant a real time engine with your Gpu card with it? this technique was used on cars and now at Ilm, to see imediately the result in the view port, it's real time baby. a really great release, I couldn't wait to test the new renderman studio.

I hope I could use my shader with it without rewrite the entire Sl code .

bonsai_kittenz

10-23-2006, 03:36 AM

a question for the future...does anyone have thoughts on rfm and how it will develop/evolve, now that studio will come out. also taking into consideration the...discreet factor and future versions of maya..

just wondering if it's a renderer to learn and grow with

yunqingyi

10-23-2006, 11:32 AM

jude3dpixar worked well on the new renderman. renderman 13 is really amazing, you could implant a real time engine with your Gpu card with it? this technique was used on cars and now at Ilm, to see imediately the result in the view port, it's real time baby. a really great release, I couldn't wait to test the new renderman studio.

I hope I could use my shader with it without rewrite the entire Sl code .

Since, we must write some sl writer-software to reply to all changes of renderman's new version.

Venkman

10-23-2006, 01:30 PM

a question for the future...does anyone have thoughts on rfm and how it will develop/evolve, now that studio will come out. also taking into consideration the...discreet factor and future versions of maya..

just wondering if it's a renderer to learn and grow with

According to the Pixar forums, RfM 2.0 beta will be out at the end of October or in early November. Rumblings peg it as a good release for Maya users- multi-threaded rendering, point cloud ambient occlusion (used in PotC:DMC on Davy Jones), etc. Basically, everyone raves about the latest Renderman (13 is it?), and RfM will include many of those improvements.

yunqingyi

10-23-2006, 02:52 PM

According to the Pixar forums, RfM 2.0 beta will be out at the end of October or in early November. Rumblings peg it as a good release for Maya users- multi-threaded rendering, point cloud ambient occlusion (used in PotC:DMC on Davy Jones), etc. Basically, everyone raves about the latest Renderman (13 is it?), and RfM will include many of those improvements.

Renderman 12.5 had hold completely all about your saying, but the filter of point cloud
dose very slowly. In the Pixar forums, someone had told me that rm13 will resolve this
problem.
I'm hoping excitedly.

bonsai_kittenz

10-24-2006, 07:56 PM

ah, thanks for the response.

it sounds pretty interesting and exciting. i suppose i'm wondering about pixars general long term goal, whether people feel renderman studio will eventually just take the place of rfm. i know this is overly-simplistic, maybe i'm hoping rfm would make it to version 3.0 at least in terms of lifespan.....thoughts?

again thanks for any input

According to the Pixar forums, RfM 2.0 beta will be out at the end of October or in early November. Rumblings peg it as a good release for Maya users- multi-threaded rendering, point cloud ambient occlusion (used in PotC:DMC on Davy Jones), etc. Basically, everyone raves about the latest Renderman (13 is it?), and RfM will include many of those improvements.

Venkman

10-24-2006, 08:23 PM

Renderman 12.5 had hold completely all about your saying, but the filter of point cloud
dose very slowly. In the Pixar forums, someone had told me that rm13 will resolve this
problem.
I'm hoping excitedly.

From what I saw posted on the Renderman forums, the improvements in RM13 make their way into RfM 2.0, including the much faster point-cloud ambient occlusion.

it sounds pretty interesting and exciting. i suppose i'm wondering about pixars general long term goal, whether people feel renderman studio will eventually just take the place of rfm. i know this is overly-simplistic, maybe i'm hoping rfm would make it to version 3.0 at least in terms of lifespan.....thoughts?

again thanks for any input

I don't think Renderman studio will take the place of RfM, because the cost is significantly different and I believe they are aimed at totally different markets. At $1000, RfM is pretty tempting to a one man shop or a small studio. Renderman Studio is a little more involved, more expensive, and more powerful.

meshman

10-24-2006, 08:30 PM

No I think it will replace Rat in the long run cause i think after rat 7 there will be no more Rat just Renderman Studio.. And RFM So all the good things from Rat gets in a more slickpakage like RFM best of booth worlds I hope.

From what I saw posted on the Renderman forums, the improvements in RM13 make their way into RfM 2.0, including the much faster point-cloud ambient occlusion.

I don't think Renderman studio will take the place of RfM, because the cost is significantly different and I believe they are aimed at totally different markets. At $1000, RfM is pretty tempting to a one man shop or a small studio. Renderman Studio is a little more involved, more expensive, and more powerful.

Venkman

10-24-2006, 08:37 PM

No I think it will replace Rat in the long run cause i think after rat 7 there will be no more Rat just Renderman Studio.. And RFM So all the good things from Rat gets in a more slickpakage like RFM best of booth worlds I hope.

Sorry if I confused anyone in my words- my impression from pixar and the news coming from Siggraph was that Renderman Studio was replacing RAT and that RfM would continue to develop.

Als

10-24-2006, 09:05 PM

Rfm is a blessing.
It's what I always wanted.
It allows you to slowly and gradually learn more about renderman in general and start using the power of prm.

Is renderman worth learning? Heh, yes.
Not easy, but more you learn the better it gets.
It's so mighty powerfull, and it solves all the rendering problems maya has.
Please make it MUST to be included with every maya license!
Rfm is also a way to make money while developing more user friendly interface for other mortals who use RAT in big studios. So as next step comes Renderman studio, which will unify both and be the best thing out there. Need quick great rendering tool to do simple job?
Rfm will do.
Client got mad and asks insted of one animated fish to make 10000 and make coral rief to sweam around - no problem, just expand and use RAT.
Now only to convince my boss to buy me 3!

Als

jude3d

11-01-2006, 01:11 AM

I think the major devellopment of Rfm and renderman studio is going to give a complete support of maya elements, including fur, particles and maya shader, paint fx and all.The reason is simple many studio and pixar itself use renderman, slim, alfred, it ....
Renderman studio seems to be really great integrated in the maya interface and it's great, it save a lot of time to convert things in RAT. I'm waiting this babe for a while because renderman 13 is really awesome, and the next version will be probably better and better. but pixar give studio totally new way to render big scene file with occlusion and color bleeding, displacement and hdri lighting with the faster rendering I've ever seen.
I think pixar will become the next standard of rendering for many studio who never used it before because rendering are totally in hand control and renderman architecture is really powerfull and easy to customize for advanced user.
I just hope one day pixar could give in Rfm and studio a big collection of template shader and advanced utilty ( like brdf specular, more accurate SSS, and shaders ...) because for new user in renderman it's hard to create complexe shaders if you didn't study math, code and things like that.
This will help a lot the new renderman users. maybe for the next release? I hope that for users. I've chance to have lot of great utility and tool and without it's really hard to create so good rendering and to use renderman in full potential.
Now there are many render engine available in maya and renderman is still the most customisable and flexible and with new technology of ptfilter GI , it's the faster one.

cbernardo

11-01-2006, 01:50 PM

Hi,

Maya 8 works with the Renderman Server 12? And with Renderman Artist?

[]s
carlos

jude3d

11-01-2006, 05:36 PM

renderman 13 is out for month now but you need to wait december for a maya 8 version of RAT7.0 and renderman studio 1.0.

the beta will start soon for studio and Rfm according to pixar forum.

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